82 THEISLAND ACADIANS

Father Sylvain-Ephrem Poirier (or Perrey, as he usually signed his name) was ordained on Prince Edward Island by Bishop Angus Bernard MacEachern on June 28, 1828. He exercised his ministry for fifty years until age and blindness forced him to retire. In the beginning, he was in charge of all the Acadian missions in Prince County: Tignish, Cas- cumpec, Mont Carmel, Egmont Bay, Miscouche, etc. In 1843 his ter- ritory was limited to the parishes of Miscouche, Egmont Bay and Mont Carmel. From 1869 up to the time of his retirement in 1879 he was the parish priest for Mont Carmel only. He died in 1887 in Egmont Bay where he was buried''.

For many years Father Poirier remained the only French-language priest in the province. We should mention, however, that during the reign of Bishop Bernard Donald MacDonald who succeeded Bishop MacEachern in 1837 and who established his residence in Rustico, several French-language priests did work in that parish in their capacity as bishop’s aides'??. Moreover, anglophone priests working on the Island at the time usually had quite a good knowledge of French because, for the most part, they had been trained in seminaries in Quebec.

But the diocese was still experiencing a shortage of priests. In 1857, Bishop MacDonald asked the Montreal diocese to send him a priest to assist the Island clergy whose mission was becoming more and more onerous’’. For that purpose, therefore, Father Fortunat Aubry arrived in Rustico in May 1858. The following are Father Aubry’s initial comments:

On Sunday I preached in Rustico where Bishop MacDonald resides. It has been almost a year since the Acadians, who form five-sixths of the population, have heard a sermon in French; the priest living with the Bishop does not understand French, not even enough to be able to hear confessions, and Monseigneur has difficulty speaking, he coughs so much. (TR)'**

In the end, Father Aubry only stayed on the Island for one year. After his departure, three more priests from Quebec were sent by the bishop of Montreal at the request of his colleague on the Island. They were: Fathers George-Antoine Belcourt, Joseph Quévillon and André Roy. These priests were to play an important role in the Acadian parishes. :